[gentoo-user] libacl mess

[gentoo-user] libacl mess

[Philip Webb]

I finally got back to updating my netbook,
in which I installed Gentoo a few months ago.
I came across the packages 'acl' & 'attr',
which are not installed in my regular desktop machine
& for which 'equery d' showed nothing actually dependent
('emerge -cpv' doesn't work with the earlier Portage in the netbook).
So I uninstalled them & quickly discovered that Coreutils was borked;
not only that, but 'emerge <anything>' fails
because it can't find  /usr/lib/libacl.so.1 .
I downloaded the latest Stage 3 for 'i686' into my desktop machine,
unpacked it in a spare dir & copied the resulting 'libacl' files
to the netbook, recreating there the symlink 'libacl.so.1'.
Now 'emerge' complains that the 'libacl.so.1' ELF header is invalid.

The next step seems to be to unpack the whole Stage 3 tarball
in the netbook's  /  dir & see what happens.  After that, a full reinstall.

No, my desktop machine doesn't need 'acl' for its more recent 'coreutils'.
Yes, i know about 'busybox', but 'emerge' can't use that.
No, I can't 'emerge --sync', which fails as above.
Yes, I tried 'USE="-acl" emerge coreutils', which also fails as above.

Any advice which might save me further time + anguish wb very welcome.

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

Re: [gentoo-user] libacl mess : further thoughts

[Philip Webb]

100820 Philip Webb wrote:
>> The next step seems to be to unpack the whole Stage 3 tarball
>> in the netbook's  /  dir & see what happens.  After that, a full reinstall.

Further examination of what's in Stage 3
+ review of my detailed notes from installation last year suggest
that the correct attempt wb to unpack the tarball somewhere temporary,
then copy  /bin /lib /sbin /usr /var  into the existing set-up;
also to unpack the latest Portage snapshot into  /usr/portage ;
after that, copy carefully selected parts of  /etc .
After all, I do have a working kernel + system configuration,
which is partly what needs to be created during a basic install.

Of course, if there's a simpler method anyone can suggest, I wb thankful.
Can anyone explain why it's choking on the ELF header ?

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

Re: [gentoo-user] libacl mess : further thoughts

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 08/20/2010 11:02 AM, Philip Webb wrote:
> 100820 Philip Webb wrote:
>>> The next step seems to be to unpack the whole Stage 3 tarball
>>> in the netbook's  /  dir&  see what happens.  After that, a full reinstall.
>
> Further examination of what's in Stage 3
> + review of my detailed notes from installation last year suggest
> that the correct attempt wb to unpack the tarball somewhere temporary,
> then copy  /bin /lib /sbin /usr /var  into the existing set-up;
> also to unpack the latest Portage snapshot into  /usr/portage ;
> after that, copy carefully selected parts of  /etc .
> After all, I do have a working kernel + system configuration,
> which is partly what needs to be created during a basic install.
>
> Of course, if there's a simpler method anyone can suggest, I wb thankful.
> Can anyone explain why it's choking on the ELF header ?
>

You might be able to grab the 'acl' and 'attr' packages from here:

   http://tinderbox.dev.gentoo.org/

Hopefully, replacing them will fix your coreutils. If not, try replacing 
coreutils too.

Note that this probably has the potential to make things worse, and I 
obviously can't test it.

Re: [gentoo-user] libacl mess : solved by sleep

[Philip Webb]

100820 Michael Orlitzky wrote:
> You might be able to grab the 'acl' and 'attr' packages from here:
>    http://tinderbox.dev.gentoo.org/

Thanks for that link: I had the idea someone kept tarballs somewhere,
but couldn't find a reference in my usually extensive notes.

Anyway after some sleep, I woke up Horace (my ASUS EEE netbook)
with the idea of copying the Portage snapshot + Stage 3 into it
while finishing waking up.  I have a big partition in all my machines
which I mount as  /z  & which I treat as an empty hangar for heavy lifting
(eg  /z/tmp  is what Portage uses while compiling: OO needs  5 GB  here).
In Horace, it's  60 GB .

So that's where I'll copy the new stuff to partly re-install Gentoo.
Let's see what's there: 'cd /z ; bb ls' -> '... store3 store5 ...';
so what are those stores ? -- 'cd store3 ; bb ls' -> '... bin lib sbin ...';
hmm, must be from when I installed last November, mb I should remove it;
wait a min, "... lib ...": 'cd lib ; bb ls -l liba*' -> '... libacl.so.1 ...'.
so do miracles still happen, really ? -- let's copy the 'acl attr' stuff
back into  /usr/lib  & see what happens; 'emerge -pv coreutils' ->
'... -acl [green] ... ' -- yes, it's not in the list in my  make.conf ,
but was used for some unknown reason in the Gentoo tarball -- ;
'emerge coreutils' -> goes on & on & on testing configs, it's compiling !
it's installing ! it's Supergentoo ! -- 'ls' alone now works again, ok !

So it was a nasty little trap waiting to happen,
a very rare occasion to fault the devs for using 'acl' in the tarball.
What it shows, yet again, is the value of keeping copies of everything,
& finally, that with Linux & esp Gentoo problems are  1  layer deep:
identify what is wrong & it's fairly simple to put it right
& you may even find luck is on your side some of the time, as here.

HTH others.

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca